Containers and Contents

In the church today we tend to confuse methods and message, style and substance, or container and content. The issue of style in church has been a contentious one for a long time. It even goes back to the very public condemnation of Isaac Watts as a heretic because he wrote his own words to be put to music instead of limiting himself to the common practice of putting music to the words of the Psalms.

I want to put this discussion into the terms; container and contents. Imagine a person dying of thirst coming to your front door with an empty gourd, the container they have always used to carry water, and asking to fill it with water. Your response is to say, "We don't put water in gourds around here. We believe it is wrong to drink water from anything other than a glass." You send them away thirsty, unwilling to give them water in a gourd.

This seems like a ridiculous story yet I believe it illustrates the way many churches respond when they are confronted with a new way to deliver the gospel. When we make the container too important people die of spiritual thirst because of our stubborn pride concerning the container we have always used.

On the other hand some churches are flexible with containers but the contents are tainted. They have taken the gospel and colored it and sweetened it so that more will drink it. In the process they don't realize that the contents they have offered has become poison Kool-Aid.

The contents are the important thing. Presenting the pure gospel, being faithful to the word are the contents where life giving water is given. In fact the Word Himself, that is Jesus, said,
" ... but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14

We come to Jesus with all kind of containers, gourds, glasses, ladles, bowls, even open hands to receive the living water. Lets stop arguing about who has the best, most correct container and be happy that people are receiving life giving water in any container!!!